Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: U.S. environmentalists are reeling after the State Department cut the ground from under their feet.

In a draft paper on the contentious Keystone XL pipeline, its experts concluded building the line to move Alberta crude to the U.S. Gulf coast is environmentally safe. In addition, it would have little or no effect on carbon emissions and failure to build it would not halt oil-sands production.

Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed Project, remains unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the U.S.

Now, the tree huggers are pinning their hopes on the fact the paper is a draft and John Kerry, the new secretary of state, will not support it.

But with more lawmakers of all parties, including John Boehner, the influential Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, on side and 70% of Americans supporting the plan, their cause looks doomed. Supporters hope construction will create thousands of jobs — albeit temporarily — and reduce the cost of gas station fillups.

All of which makes it increasingly likely President Barack Obama, who doesn’t have to campaign for another term, will give Keystone XL the green light.

Ultimately, it’s a win-win situation for Canada. While Alberta would like to send its oil south, there are plenty of markets elsewhere — most notably China — for its product.

States that could benefit from the pipeline are enthusiastic. In North Dakota, an editorial in the Bismarck Tribune proclaims,

We continue to beat the drum for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, as have the state’s U.S. senators. It makes for good policy, diplomacy and economics. [Barack Obama, the U.S.] president should act favourably on the pipeline … The Keystone XL pipeline will create jobs during construction, assist our Canadian allies, help move North Dakota crude oil to those Southern refineries and support a well-reasoned national energy policy. Again, the president should approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

Similarly, editorial writers at Iowa’s Des Moines Register believe pipelines are one of the costs of living in an age of oil.

The obvious alternatives — shipping oil by rail, truck, barge or ocean tankers — would be more expensive than by pipeline, or less safe, according to the report. Using railroad tankers in conjunction with existing pipelines, for example, would require building 14 shipping yards that require 500 acres each. And the amount of fuel consumed by rail, truck or shipping by sea would contribute even more to greenhouse gases. The only acceptable alternative for some critics of the Keystone XL pipeline project is doing nothing. But that would not end the extraction of oil in Canada.

In an opinion piece, the Wall Street Journal asks whether the U.S. wants to be considered a serious economic nation.

One of the better economic stories of the last 50 years has been the integration of the North American economy, including the free flow of goods, investment and to some extent people. Rejection of the pipeline would be an insult to Canada and a step back from that integration. The larger issue is whether the U.S. wants to continue to be considered a serious economic nation with rising living standards and a modern energy supply. If Mr. Obama turns down Keystone XL, the Chinese will be laughing at us as they buy Canadian oil and build their economic power, while America adapts to the Sierra Club’s preferred future of the world as Walden Pond.

Not everyone is pro-pipeline. Time magazine’s Michael Grunwald is with the tree huggers. Writing in the Swampland blog, he says,

The pipeline isn’t the worst threat to the climate, but it’s a threat. Keystone isn’t the best fight to have over fossil fuels, but it’s the fight we’re having. Now is the time to choose sides. It’s always easy to quibble with the politics of radical protest: Did ACT UP need to be so obnoxious? Didn’t the tax evasion optics of the Boston Tea Party muddle the anti-imperial message? But if we’re in a war to stop global warming … then we need to fight it on the beaches, the landing zones and the carbon-spewing tar sands of Alberta. If we’re serious about reducing atmospheric carbon below 350 parts per million, we need to start leaving some carbon in the ground …It’s true that imposing tough new carbon restrictions for power plants would do far more to control greenhouse gases than rejecting the pipeline, but there’s no reason Obama can’t do both.

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